Stephen Armstrong Program Manager The Myer Foundation and Sidney Myer Fund
THE SIDNEY MYER FUND ANNOUNCES MAJOR GRANTS FOR
AUSTRALIAN BIOGRAPHERS

The Sidney Myer Fund today announced the recipients of the inaugural
Merlyn Myer Biography Stipends.

Created on the thirtieth anniversary of the death of MerlynMyer(1900-1982), philanthropist and wife of Sidney Myer, thisbiennial program has been establishedto celebrate the importance of memoryand the art of biography.

Valued at $50,000 each, the stipendsprovide direct support to biographersduring the research and writing phase of a recently commissioned work.

Applicants for the stipend are required to be Australian writers under commission from an Australian publisher for a biographic study of an individual or group. The subject of the biography is not required to be Australian. While the authors’ research might be longstanding, the stipends are intended for recently commissioned projects (contracted since January 2012).

Selection criteria include: excellence in non-fiction narrative writing; liveliness and readability of structure and style, and; rigor and perspicacity in research.

The 2013 stipends of$50,000 have been awarded to:

Thornton McCamish for a biographic study of Alan Moorehead (working title) commissioned by Black Inc.

Geordie Williamson for a group biography of his 19th century forbears, The Kings of Rapa Nuicommissioned by The Text Publishing Company.

The two recipients were recommended by a specially convened panel from a field of nineteen eligible proposals from author/publisher teams:

Carrillo Gantner (Convenor) Chair, Sidney Myer Fund
Elisa Berg Publisher
David Marr Journalist and author
Kate Darian-Smith Professor of Australian Studies, History and
Cultural Heritage at the University of Melbourne

A Word from the Panel

‘The Kings of Rapa Nui is one we all want to read. We were impressed by its sweep, its setting and its big ambitions. Geordie Williamson is proposing to write not a conventional life but a family saga – a “group biography” – that spans the century from the 1850s in which the Williamsons ran a commercial empire in South America. To this gripping and unexpected subject, Williamson promises to bring the unique authority and access of a member of the family plus a determination to discover what sort of people the Williamsons really were: the colonial exploiters of Conrad’s fiction or the “devout and decent fellows” of family lore.’

‘Thornton McCamish has chosen for his subject Alan Moorehead, war correspondent, adventurer in high journalism, and author of highly popular and distinguished histories.The panel were impressed by the vitality and flair of McCamish’s writing and his deep engagement with Moorehead, the grand globe trotter and witness to world events. McCamish makes a compelling pitch to contemporary readers that we will want to spend significant time in Moorehead’s company. His approach is both sophisticated and probing as he follows Moorehead at the height of his fame wrestling with the writer that he wants to be towards the illness that tragically narrows his world. ‘

A Word from the Recipients

Geordie Williamson:
‘I’m thrilled and honoured to be one of two recipients of this year’s Merlyn Myer Biography Stipend. The award is not just a helpful fillip: it will enable the travel and research time I need to write Kings of Rapa Nui, an account of the half-century (from the 1890s to 1950s) during which my Scottish family leased Easter Island from Chile. There is nothing easy about the distance in time and space my subject represents, and while my publishers, Text, have been hugely supportive of the broader project, it is the Myer stipend that will make the book a reality. There aren’t many cultural philanthropists at work in this country today, so it is a special tribute to the larger thoughtfulness of the Myer Foundation that they have chosen to direct their funds towards undertakings that others overlook. I wish to register my deep gratitude to the foundation, and to Text, who argued the book’s promise with eloquence and insight. I hope I can do them both proud.’

Thornton McCamish:
‘It is an honour, and a huge thrill, to have been selected as one of two recipients of the inaugural Merlyn Myer Biography Stipend. This extraordinarily generous award will enable me to finish a biography of the writer Alan Moorehead that I first began working on about six years ago. It’s also a priceless shot of confidence. Biography can sometimes feel like a lonely obsession, and it’s inspiring that the Myer Foundation has recognised in Moorehead’s mid-twentieth century life a great Australian story that deserves to be more widely known. A war correspondent and popular historian, Moorehead was a literary giant of his age who is now all but forgotten. My biography is a boots-on-the-ground account of a rich, globe-trotting, tragic life, but it’s also an attempt to reclaim a place for Moorehead’s work in our national memory. Thanks to the Foundation, and to the fearless support of my publisher, Black Inc., I’ve been given every chance to do that.’

About the Recipients

Geordie Williamson is chief literary critic of the Australian newspaper, a position he has held since 2008, though his essays and reviews have been appearing in newspapers and magazines here and in the UK for over a decade.In 2011, he won the Pascall Prize for criticism, Australia’s only major national prize awarded for critical writing. His first book, The Burning Library, was published by Text in 2012.

Thornton McCamish is a Melbourne-based freelance journalist and editor. A former editor of The Big Issue (Australia) magazine, he has contributed regularly to The Age and The Sunday Age for the past 15 years. His work has also appeared in The Australian, New Matilda and Good Weekend. His travel book Supercargo: A Journey Among Ports was published by Lonely Planet in 2002.

A Word from the Publishers

Michael Heyward, Text Publishing:
‘Geordie Williamson’s Kings of Rapa Nui promises to be an extraordinary book, a story like no other which contains many stories. It will be one of the most unusual biographies Text has ever published, a blend of autobiography, memoir and family history that has much to teach us about empires and colonies, money and power, possession and dispossession. We salute the Sidney Myer Fund for its foresight and entrepreneurship in creating the Merlyn Myer Biography Stipend, and congratulate Geordie along with Thornton McCamish as inaugural recipients. This initiative will not only benefit the writing of biography in Australia but it will deepen our understanding of remarkable Australians.’

Chris Feik, Black Inc:
‘Black Inc. salutes the Myer Foundation. With this stipend it seeks to rectify two deficiencies. We lack a deep culture of biography in Australia. And too often we forget our best and brightest. Alan Moorehead was a master reporter and storyteller, and a model to those who came after, his life replete with glamour, drama and accomplishment. It is a life ripe for imaginative reclamation, and in Thornton he has a biographer perfectly equipped to do this. Thornton has a prose style that sparkles and the ability to turn his fascination into an involving story of discovery, thereby making a perceptive, humorous and original contribution to the art of biography.’